The Economist: The price of being female artist

Cindy Sherman “Untitled #96” (1981) brought in $3,890,500 at Christie's New York

An analysis of data provided by artnet, however, suggests that the prospects for women are slowly improving. Compare, for example, the top ten most expensive male and female artists. Admittedly $86.9m, the highest price for a work by a post-war male artist (set by “Orange, Red, Yellow” by Mark Rothko) dwarfs the highest price paid for a work made by a woman—$10.7m for Louise Bourgeois‘s large-scale bronze “Spider”. However, of the top-ten men, only two are living, whereas among the top-ten women, five are still working (see chart below).

“Attitudes are changing generationally,” says Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of post-war and contemporary art development at Christie’s. “It wasn’t long ago that it was hard to be taken seriously as a woman artist. There will be some remedial catch up before women artists have parity on prices.”